Background –
It’s akin to expecting someone to climb Mount Everest in a month, Rajan Wadhera says of having to leapfrog to the much stricter Bharat Stage VI (BS VI) emission norms from BS IV in less than three years.
The task at hand for Wadhera, president, automotive sector at Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, involves upgrading and overhauling the entire manufacturing ecosystem to ensure it can handle several thousand tests, calibration and validation and also fits in well with the technology choices, while keeping a tight leash on costs.
That will make it one of the most mammoth research and development projects undertaken by the automotive industry in India, says Timothy Leverton, chief technology officer at Tata Motors Ltd.
The transition will involve overhauling the working dynamics of the automakers and will alter the cost structure forever, Leverton says.
So what differentiates the BS VI standard from BS IV?
It’s the introduction of advanced technologies to ensure pollutants emitted by the vehicles are reduced and comply with the specified limits. It will also mean a number of changes to be made in the engine systems.
The implementation of the advanced emission norms might still be three years away, but Wadhera and Leverton are already racing against time to execute the most complex project of their careers.
The task is more onerous for companies that have products spanning several categories, ranging from cars and SUVs to two-wheelers and trucks. Such a portfolio means that the companies would have to invest more resources and time to build the requisite capabilities for successfully executing the programme.
Tata Motors, for instance, uses 34 different engines and has 150 vehicle programmes that will be fitted with those engines. “We have such a huge range to work on—from Magic Iris to 49-tonne trucks,” says Leverton. “Europe took nine years to go to the effective equivalent of BS VI, we have to do it in three. It’s a huge programme.”
Mahindra’s Wadhera echoes similar sentiments. “In my last 50 years, I have not seen this kind of challenge. It’s far more difficult than most of the technical transformations that I have seen so far.”
To understand the challenges Wadhera and Leverton face, it is worth diving into the underlying emission technologies.
To achieve a reduction in particulate matter by 82% and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) by 68%, auto makers need a combination of technologies—one is the diesel particulate filter (DPF), a device designed to remove diesel particulate matter, or soot, from the exhaust gas of a diesel engine.
Then there’s selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and exhaust gas re-circulation (EGR), which is for NOx reduction.
SCR is a process that uses a catalyst to convert NOx in exhaust gases to nitrogen and water, which are then released into the air. In EGR, the engine re-circulates a portion of the exhaust gas back to the engine cylinders depriving it of certain amount of oxygen thereby leading to lower temperature burn. This reduces NOx emissions, but produces more PM, which is reduced using diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and particulate filter.
Auto parts shake-up
The transition is also an inflection point for auto component makers—both Indian and multinationals. By acquiring technologies and capabilities through joint ventures, home-grown companies see this as a chance to move up the value chain.
For multinationals such as Germany’s Bosch AG and America’s Cummins Inc., it’s an opportunity to develop a solution for a market that is unique, and create an economy of scale for low-cost emission control systems and technologies that can be used in other emerging markets.
“The shift to BS VI is set to shake up the auto component industry,” says Raghuttama Rao, a former managing director at Icra Management Consulting Services Ltd. According to Rao, only those that have the requisite technology will be able to pass muster. He expects dominance of global auto component makers to increase, either directly or indirectly.
Jan O. Röhrl, chief technology officer and head of mobility solutions business for India at Bosch Ltd says: “It’s a huge step as compared to a BS IV since the capacity requirement for a BS VI is increased by a factor of 4 to 5.”
The shift, he adds, is an opportunity for the automaker and Bosch as a supplier, pointing out that the company will draw from its previous learnings as it has supplied the same globally and can do the same even in India.
Owing to its long presence in the country, it already has modern testing facilities. Additionally, in May, Bosch broke ground for the second phase of its Bidadi plant near Bengaluru with an investment of around Rs500-600 crore. The unit will manufacture parts for BS VI compliant vehicles as well.
The local arm of the German component maker is developing a lean electronic fuel injection system (LEFIS) for three-wheelers that will help them meet the BS VI norms.
“We knew that in a cost-sensitive market like India, customers would face the difficulty of being able to afford a fuel injection system that was relevant to European conditions,” he says. The challenge, therefore, was to design a system for India that would not just meet the stringent particulate matter (PM) and NOx emissions of BS VI but also be cost-effective and robust to survive “the harsh use-case here”, he says.
A combination of mechanical pump and electronically controlled smart fuel injectors, LEFIS is estimated to go into series testing phase by mid-2019 and enter 2020 fully prepared to meet the BS VI emission regulation, he says.
Sandeep Sinha, chief operating officer at Cummins India Ltd, says the real challenge is not engines or engine technology as that’s already available, but system integration and optimizing them as per Indian driving cycle and the time required for calibration and validation. Cummins is one of the largest engine makers in the country.
The cost of developing an engine platform averages from Rs150 crore to Rs200 crore, according to Sinha. Cummins is investing Rs1,000 crore in setting up the world’s biggest research and development centre in Pune. The centre, which will start operations from the third quarter of fiscal 2017, will also have test cells for BS VI engines and will help the firm localize a lot of critical parts that are currently imported.
BS VI is a challenge as well as an opportunity for the industry as none of the Euro 6 markets have bikes with small engines, according to Deepak Jain, managing director of Lumax Auto Industries, a Gurgaon-based company that supplies lighting systems for vehicles. Manufacturers in India would have to develop a cost-effective solution from the ground up.
To be sure, it’s not the technical capability which is worrying auto firms as quite a few of them have been exporting Euro 6 vehicles to several markets. “The technology isn’t extremely difficult, but you can’t simply take what is available in Europe and transplant it in India as our driving cycle is very different,” says Vinod Dasari, managing director of Ashok Leyland Ltd. “We will have to apply Indian innovation and this will require investment and time.”
Driving cycle refers to the speed of a vehicle versus time.
It’s the challenge of executing the project of such a huge scale which is giving sleepless nights to companies. As the intermediary BS V stage has been skipped, there’s a time crunch and firms would have to develop and optimize the DPF and SCR systems in parallel, instead of doing it sequentially.
“I know how to do it. But I need to know how to do it better than others,” says Dasari.
Mahindra’s Wadhera agrees. “It’s not about the technology per se as I have it, my challenge is to multiply it over various platforms in that order, go through the grind with perfection. In the process of doing that, I don’t have to compromise on fuel efficiency,” he says.
Mahindra’s large portfolio of models explains Wadhera’s worries. The company has 10 vehicle platforms across several product categories including cars, SUVs, trucks and pick-ups. For each, it would need at least 20 people and three years’ time to develop a good DPF with good test facility. It needs 5,000 hours on the test bed and at least 700 tests on the chassis dynamometer, a device for measurement and testing developed to simulate the road on a roller in a controlled environment, mainly inside the building. The vehicle is fixed to a building with a restraint device.
To test these technologies for best results, their performance needs to be monitored in every season and across various terrains, says Wadhera. “You are trying to evolve a methodology for calibration. To ensure the technology developed is foolproof, you need a minimum of two cycles—two years, two seasons,” he explains, adding that any laxity in testing and validating the functioning of the device can be a major safety hazard.
The second technology is SCR, which too has a development cycle of three years. It will take close to 4,000 hours of test-bed running. It will need chassis dynamometer and will necessitate development of several new parts and around 20 to 25 new vehicle systems.
There is also the challenge of packaging them all efficiently in the limited space without compromising on fuel efficiency. The addition of parts and aggregates such as the DPF , a urea tank, dozing unit for NOx (required in SCR) will increase the weight of the vehicle by at least 40-50kg. The additional weight can impact the fuel efficiency.
Economies of scale
To be able to develop both DPF and SCR technology simultaneously, across 10 vehicle platforms, Mahindra will need 400 skilled people—20 people per platform. “Manpower needs to be skilled, who will teach them? It’s a new technology. We are struggling, it’s a mammoth challenge,” says Wadhera.
Unlike BS IV and BS V where one can manage with either one of the technologies—EGR or SCR, BS VI needs both. Therefore, the complexity increases manifold, says Leverton. The sheer content means that the number of engineers and test facilities one needs, will have to be accelerated.
One of the biggest areas of engineering activity for example, is in the areas of electronic control calibration—“you make the basic system and you have to adapt it to an application of a vehicle”, he says, pointing out that Tata Motors needs three times the number of calibration engineers it currently has.
The average cost of calibrating and developing each of the ten BS VI platforms could be anywhere between Rs75 crore to Rs100 crore, depending on the extent to which a company seeks external help and engages firms such as FAB, Ricardo and AVL that specialize in emission technology, says Wadhera.
In the run-up to the BS VI implementation in April 2020, Ashok Leyland is likely to spend anywhere between Rs200 crore to Rs400 crore, says Dasari. This is inclusive of infrastructure and people costs, among other things. Ashok Leyland will need to hire around 100 engineers, he says.
It’s critical to do it all at a competitive cost so that Indian companies can compete with big multinationals, who have it all—technical capability, experience, and deep pockets.
“We would be much rather on the lower side. With lower costs, we’ll have a much better pricing power,” says Wadhera, pointing out that the economies of scale Indian companies have will put them in good stead vis-à-vis foreign rivals.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.